Since he sided with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on a deal to tack
on a three-month suspension of the federal debt ceiling — and
a continuing resolution to fund the government through early
December — to a bill that would also include money for Hurricane
Harvey relief, Trump has been repeating the "b" word over and
over while making more overtures to Democrats than he had
throughout his young presidency.

Within the past 24 hours, Trump has hosted a dinner with a
bipartisan group of senators that included Democrats Joe Manchin
of West Virginia, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, and Joe
Donnelly of Indiana; met with a bipartisan group of congressmen
that included Democrats Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, Henry
Cuellar of Texas, Stephanie Murphy of Florida, Collin Peterson of
Minnesota, Kurt Schrader of Oregon, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona,
Tom Suozzi of New York, and Peter Welch of Vermont; and invited
both Schumer and Pelosi back to the White House for a
Wednesday-night dinner.

After being asked by a reporter on Wednesday what his message is
for conservatives who are "skeptical of this new approach with
Democrats," Trump suggested that some of the "greatest
legislation in history" was passed in a bipartisan manner.

"Well, I'm conservative and, I will tell you, I'm not skeptical,"
Trump said. "And I think that if we can do things in a bipartisan
manner, that will be great. Now, it might not work out, in which
case, we'll try and do them without. But I think if we can do, in
a bipartisan manner — if you look at some of the greatest
legislation ever passed, it was done on a bipartisan manner. And
so that's why we’re going to give it a shot."

The president, eager to pass his big-ticket agenda items such as
tax reform and an infrastructure package, seems to have reacted
well to positive news coverage that came out of his deal with
Schumer and Pelosi last week, and is now attempting to carry over
any momentum built by the deal. In the deal's immediate
aftermath, Trump spoke in glowing terms about both it and his
partners in the agreement, "Chuck" and "Nancy." He told reporters
he thought "you are going to see a much stronger coming together"
and
that the deal signaled more bipartisan action on the horizon.

"I think we will have a different relationship than we've been
watching over the last number of years," Trump said. "I hope so.
I think that's what the people of the United States want to see.
They want to see some dialogue."

Now just a week after
Trump's deal with Schumer and Pelosi — after going months
without any sort of meeting — Trump already invited both of them
back to the White House to follow up on last week's meeting, as a
source familiar with the meeting described it to Business
Insider. That source added that Schumer and Pelosi plan to push
Trump on codifying protections for some immigrants living in the
country illegally and stabilizing healthcare markets.

"As we've said many times before, we've got a very ambitious
legislative agenda for this fall, and the president wants to work
with anybody that wants to move America forward," White House
press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said at Wednesday's press
briefing. "And if they're willing to do that — sit down, be part
of that conversation on both tax cuts and tax reform, responsible
immigration reform — then the President certainly welcomes those
conversations."

Asked whether the president views Schumer and Pelosi as "equal
allies" for accomplishing his goals, on par with Senate Majority
Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan, Sanders
confirmed that "the president is a Republican."

"And certainly I think ideologically that's a much cleaner
matchup," she said. "But again, if these people and these
individuals, whether they're Democrats or Republicans, want to
come together to push the president's agenda and the agenda that
clearly the American people want to see, or they wouldn't have
elected Donald Trump, then we're certainly happy to have that
conversation and move that ball forward."

Speaking to reporters at his meeting with representatives from
both parties Wednesday, Trump said both sides are "more and more
... trying to work things out together."

"That's a positive thing, and it's good for the Republicans and
good for the Democrats," he said. "And this group knows that very
well. Whether we can do the incredible things that we're doing —
and working in a bipartisan fashion, obviously, would be a
positive."

"I think it's really — the whole concept of what we're trying to
do is very, very important," he continued. "Inspired by the
example of our own citizens, we should be able to come together
to make government work for the people — that's why I was
elected, that's why I ran — and to provide jobs and opportunities
to millions of struggling families. This includes tax reform that
is pro-jobs, pro-growth, pro-family, and pro-American. It's very
simple. It's all pro-American."

Switching to discussing tax reform, Trump called for making the
tax code "simple and fair" in addition to providing a significant
cut, later telling reporters that "the rich will not be gaining
at all with this plan," something Democrats are insisting on in
order to come to the table and deal on tax legislation.

"I think the wealthy will be pretty much where they are — pretty
much where they are," he said. "If we can do that, we’d like it.
If they have to go higher, they’ll go higher, frankly. We’re
looking at the middle class and we’re looking at jobs."

He also called for an infrastructure package as "another
bipartisan project that is urgently needed" and brought up DACA —
the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals executive order that
Trump announced last week he would end in six months — a subject
Schumer and Pelosi will push at their Wednesday dinner.

Trump said "we’ll probably also be talking about DACA" at his
meeting with bipartisan representatives "because we don’t want to
forget DACA."

"And it's already been a week and a half, and people don't talk
about it as much," he said. "We want to see if we can do
something with regard to immigration, with regard to the 800,000
people that are now young people. They're not children anymore.
They were children, now they're young people. But we want to see
if we can do something in a bipartisan fashion so that we can
solve the DACA problem and other immigration problems."

Suggesting that the differences between Republicans and Democrats
are "little," Trump called for putting those differences "aside."

"When we set aside our differences — and it's amazing how
sometimes how little our differences are — we put our country and
we put the citizens of our country first," Trump said. "And
that's what this is all about."